


What Kind Of Day Has It Been?

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Adventuring, Drama, Gen, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, boldly going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-27 20:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8416147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: Some days it really pays to enjoy the boredom; on board the Enterprise, it never lasts for long.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2009.

It happens like this.

Stuck in the middle of nowhere while Scotty “improves” the engines (“it willn’a take more than an hour, Captain”), Kirk is trying, and failing, to appear interested in Spock’s summation of the next mission. Escorting Federation diplomats to a summit on Tellar isn’t exactly Kirk’s idea of fun, but then as his mother is fond of saying, “careful what you wish for.”

The first indication that everything is about to go to hell in a handbasket is when Uhura starts to giggle uncontrollably at her post.

Kirk merely swivels his chair and attempts a Vulcan-like raised eyebrow, assuming that he is being made fun of and good-naturedly playing along. But people who have giggle fits rarely have eyes that look quite so panicked. Nor do they traditionally fall to the floor, gasping for air.

Spock rushes to Uhura’s side, Kirk calls down to sickbay, and Chekov and Sulu both look away from their controls long enough to miss the new course being plotted in.

It happens like this.

Uhura is rushed to the sickbay and Kirk is torn between going down with her and remaining on the Bridge. It’s at that precise moment that he feels the true weight of the uniform. It wouldn’t be the last.

He’s not just making insane decisions for himself anymore, he’s making them for everyone on the ship too. And now probably isn’t the time to freak out. So he shoots Spock a quick “god help me I don’t know what I’m doing” look, and sits back down in the Command Chair.

“Kirk to Sickbay. Report as soon as you know Lt Uhura’s condition.”

“Of course, Captain,” a calm female voice responds.

“I don’t _know_ what’s wrong with her…” McCoy’s voice announces loud and clear until Kirk quickly turns off the companel.

“Mr Sulu,” Kirk says, voice light but firm, “let’s call a halt to Scotty’s tests. I’d feel better if we were on the move. Full impulse as soon as you can.”

“Yes, Captain,” Sulu responds, turning to lock eyes with Chekov before he examines the console. His face goes slack quickly enough for Chekov to spot his exaggerated look of concern. One that doesn’t go unnoticed by Kirk or Spock either. Spock speaks first.

“Mr Sulu, is anything the matter?”

“I’m…I’m not sure, sir.” He feels it then, that sharp bloom of embarrassment he’d felt when Captain Pike had given him an order that he hadn’t managed to follow the first time he was asked.

“Are you feeling all right?” Kirk asks, sitting forward a little, hand half-reaching out to call for medical assistance.

“Yes sir, it’s just…” His eyes absorb all the data flickering through on his screen, and he knows what he’s seeing is right even if he can’t yet understand why.

“Sulu?” Kirk asks again and there is a definite undertone of annoyance that Sulu is quick to respond to.

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s just…I don’t know where we are.”

It happens like this.

Kirk is having a really bad day. He’d thought he was just going to have a bad, but essentially boring day, but no, the Universe really had it in for him and his ship. His communications officer is in sickbay, sedated for her own good, and suffering from a yet unidentified ailment (“you’ll know when I do, which’ll be a lot sooner if you stop bothering me”) and they appear to be lost in space.

“We’re what?” Kirk asks, shooting Spock a “you better have an explanation” look that Spock ignores. Instead he turns to examine his own readout.

“Hyperbole not withstanding, Captain, Mr Sulu is correct in his assessment of the facts only in so much as we are not currently where we are supposed to be.”

“Okay, great,” Kirk says, his limited patience already wearing thin. “In English?”

Spock’s eyebrow twitches, a trick Kirk in no way envies. “It seems that we have been diverted from our original course and are now heading towards the nearest class-M planet.”

Spock’s tone holds no fear or alarm, but Kirk finds himself sitting up a little straighter, contemplating his next move a little quicker, just by observing the way Spock manoeuvres his fingers over his controls.

“Diverted by who?”

“The inhabitants of the planet, no doubt.” Spock doesn’t have to say “you idiot” but Kirk can hear it all the same. As can, no doubt, the rest of the Bridge.

But Kirk’s made a fool of himself plenty of times, and somebody has to be a foil to Spock’s unwavering logic, and sitting in the command chair would lend him plenty more opportunity to royally screw things up.

“And the inhabitants of said planet, are?”

Spock pushes a few buttons and then frowns. It’s a definite frown – of curiosity maybe, possibly annoyance, Kirk hasn’t quite worked out how this whole half-Vulcan/half-human thing is going to pan out. There are more ways than he imagined for a single quirk of a mouth or narrowing of the eyes to represents an entire day’s conversation, though he’s enjoying learning them all.

But right now it’s enough that he knows this particular expression = really bad news. Something he’s sure he’ll be seeing a lot of.

“Up until five minutes ago, the planet was uninhabited.”

“And now?” Kirk asks, trying to keep the worry off his face. And failing for the most part.

“The computer is detecting approximately 1.5 billion life signs on the surface of the planet.”

It happens like this.

Lt Uhura had been idly watching Spock and Kirk continue to forge the unlikeliest friendship she’d ever encountered. She wasn’t entirely sure of all that had gone down on Nero’s ship, but the change in their relationship had been obvious from the minute they’d beamed back aboard the Enterprise.

But really she’d been monitoring the sub-space frequencies, something she could (and sometimes did) do in her sleep. She knew the Captain was only indulging in Scotty’s mid-mission break to avoid the diplomatic fanfare that came with being the Federation’s flagship, not to mention being James T. Kirk, the guy who helped save the Federation. But she got quite a bit of that attention herself, and she welcomed the break as much as any of them did.

Besides, Spock had only voiced minor objections to the plan that Kirk had easily shot down, which meant he too was both happy to appease the Captain and understood that the crew needed to find its feet in a non-combat situation.

So she’s paying attention, but not, when there is a buzzing in her ears, like interference. She doesn’t report it straightaway, knowing that she couldn’t answer the inevitable questions from either Kirk or Spock. And besides, she's curious herself about this new phenomena and wants to do her own digging.

But then the sound gets louder and she can’t believe that it isn’t bleeding into the rest of the ship. And then she can feel it, like a pulse of pure sound-energy-light and it hits something in the back of her brain and she starts to laugh as images are pulled up from the recesses of her mind and implant themselves on-in-around her and now she knows there’s nothing funny about this and she really has to stop, only she can’t, and breathing’s becoming an issue and thank god the Enterprise has a First Officer and a Captain with lightning reflexes…

…And then she doesn’t think anything at all.

It happens like this.

Scotty was attempting to do something delicate and not strictly regulation to the warp engines and he’d got to know the Captain well enough to guess that as long as no one was put directly in harm’s way, Scotty could pretty much improve the engines as much as his heart desired. Or the situation warranted. So he was concentrating on what he was doing and not really paying attention to anything else when the Captain’s voice interrupted him.

“Scotty, Kirk here. What would you say if I told you we needed to get out of here as quickly as possible?”

Scotty opens his mouth to reply (“why, I’d think it t’were just a normal day aboard the Enterprise, sir”), but then he shuts it with a definite “snap”. The Captain sounds a little strained and he wouldn’t be asking if this was a purely academic question, so Scotty takes in the mess that he’s made of the engines before replying.

“I’m guessing longer than we’ve got, Captain.”

“Fix that, then, will you Mr Scott?”

Scotty knows the beginnings of a bad day when he hears one, so he only pauses long enough to shout, “aye, Captain” before he’s diverting all his attention to getting them away from whatever’s made the Captain so cranky and shouting at his team for help.

It happens like this.

Sulu and Chekov are conferring eagerly but without much success, and Spock has his head down examining readouts and Kirk finds himself suddenly superfluous. He supposes that this is part and parcel of being a Captain too and before he can decide just what to do with that piece of enlightenment, he’s thrown from his chair by a violent explosion that rocks the ship.

“Shield’s up!” Kirk shouts, rubbing the wrist he seems to have jarred in the fall and hurrying back to his feet. “Spock – are we under attack?”

“Negative, Captain. But I do believe we’ve been caught in a tractor beam.”

“Well if that’s not an attack…” Kirk drawls, eyes darting to the departmental reports as they come filtering through. No casualties, minor damage. At least that’s something.

“I merely meant that we have not been attacked by any conventional weaponry. I believe any damage we have sustained thus far has been incidental”.

“If they’re so keen to talk to us, why don’t they just hail us?” Sulu asks before Kirk has the chance. Kirk points towards him and then at Spock, the words “exactly” hanging over his head as clear as day. Spock’s eyes narrow ever so slightly but he is saved from answering by an unexpected voice coming from the turbolift.

“I think they did, Captain.”

It happens like this.

Lt Uhura was drifting off into the euphoric moment between “everything hurts, please stop the pain” sedation and “it’s time to wake up fully healed,” when she heard an echo of the sound she’d encountered on the Bridge. And as she started to surge up towards consciousness the crew talk and communications messages all coalesced.

She sits up abruptly, side-steps McCoy, “now just wait a god damned minute” and hurries up to the Bridge.

“You think they did, what, Lieutenant?” Spock asks her. He allows himself a small step towards her to demonstrate his concern for her well-being. She nods slightly to him and is impressed, and a little amused, to see that the Captain is following the Vulcan’s lead.

“I think they were hailing us before, and when that didn’t work they decided to bring us to them.” She sits down at her console and begins to punch in some data, aware that everyone on the Bridge is watching her.

“How can you be sure?” Kirk asks.

“They were communicating with me, only I wasn’t able to decipher it properly. It was like they were tapped into my head, showing me pictures that didn’t make any sense at first.” She sees Spock and Kirk look at each other and then turn back to her from the corner of her eye and any other time she’d find their shared scepticism adorable, but right now they have bigger problems.

“I need to make some adjustments…” Her fingers fly over the controls and she feels it is a measure of their respect for her that neither of the men interrupts her, certain that she’ll tell them everything as soon as she can. “It happened so quickly that it didn’t fully register until I was sedated…”

“You think these things were communicating with your _sub-conscious_ mind?” McCoy asks, having appeared on the Bridge in search of his wayward patient. Uhura nods as if he’s making perfect sense, and McCoy damn near injures himself rolling his eyes. “It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?” he asks no one in particular and Kirk and Chekov share a small smile before Uhura interrupts.

“We’re being hailed.”

It happens like this.

While hoping for some excitement and trying to avoid a week of diplomacy and boredom, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise encounter a brand new species and have to put up with a week of diplomacy and almost-not-quite boredom as everyone bar the Captain is on tenterhooks to see how long it will be before he creates a diplomatic incident.

Kirk, feeling that his position as Captain is being mocked, albeit affectionately, is trying to devise a suitable not-quite punishment that would keep them entertained before their next mission, and idly watching the stars fly by in his room when Spock appears and inquires whether he has yet eaten. Kirk’s stomach grumble tells its own story and Spock invites him to join him and Dr McCoy for lunch. Amused that McCoy and Spock are voluntarily eating together (“Uhura told me she’d be there, blasted female,”) Kirk agrees. Though not before checking that they are heading in the right direction this time.

It happens like this.

Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise and an ongoing mission to boldly go where no one has gone before.


End file.
